Making a Move

We left with a heavy heart, knowing somehow we must return. Jack writes:

HAIRY CHAIN - KEYS DISEASE - CONCH HORN - HAWKE CHANNEL

Comes a time when you notice your chain has gotten pretty hairy; the filaments stream from the links like mermaid’s hair. The old reliable plow has been down there a while quietly doing it’s job day and night, calm and blow, while you’ve gotten a dose of Keys Disease.

And why not, one may argue - it’s still the last days of winter, early spring, and the air is delicious. The tides bring a fresh cupful of water, all clear and sweet, into the anchorage two times each day, the comings and goings of dinghies whom you’ve come to know become like old friends. The long, slow chain of life in the Keys begins to creep into your biology and the easy, love-able disease of the Keys makes you it’s latest victim.

But of course. Turquoise water, the endless trade winds, the march of floating coconuts by the boat, the dolphins passing in and out with the tides, the white egrets at rest in the dark mangroves.

But there comes a day when you know that that beard on the anchor chain is whispering a quiet admonition - go man, or never move again.

So you say - we’ll clean the chain as we bring her in - you winch it in, and I’ll scrub it as it comes. And now she’s shortened, and now it’s time to up anchor, move to the outside anchorage.

Can it be true? We’re getting underway? We ease away silently though we could have told the Cruiser’s Net (Channel 68, 09:00, every morning) that we were going. But we slide away stealthily. But Holly on the S/V ‘Another Adventure’ spies us, and calls on the radio good-bye, and the schooner ‘Yankee” calls in to thank us for the drawing, and then, from “Another Adventure’ the long mournful conch song of departure fills our ears. Usually reserved for the lament to the setting of the sun and the last light of each evening, we heard it for us. A gift, a gift worth remembering.

The Hawke Channel - the outside anchorage rolly, but of course it would be with nothing to dismay the trades save Sombrero Light. But, that makes a dawn departure easy - we’re awake already. We fall away with the wind near the nose and a swell abeam. A headsail steadies the roll a bit and the course up the Hawke slowly bends to the North. When the sun finds a bit of height you begin to watch the water turn light cobalt green, and bits of bottom sparkle 12 feet below and sargassum afloat along the hull. Now the wind comes abeam, a starboard tack, fifteen knots. The sea sparkles, the bottom shimmers, we roll along at seven knots.

Forty- five miles to Rodriguez Key the first stop north. Wind singing, the song of the conch horn still in your ears. Away, Away. The good disease of the Keys begins to fade, and the chain sleeps in it’s locker, and once again we are sailors.

Our last sunset in Marathon. We left the main anchorage, to anchor outside, in the lee of Boot Key. 

A nice anchorage overall, had a nice swim in turquoise blue water.

A Sea View

Pretty days, lovely sailing weather. Why are we leaving exactly?

a little Sargasso seaweed, scooped up some and found tiny crabs and shrimp

Miami (shudder)

Entrance to Key Biscayne. The fully loaded beach on the other side, part of a park/refuge

No Name Harbor, Key Biscayne. Very protected from the weather but not from weekenders, :) This boat was called a "Wider". The sides push out for enhanced partying for we are now in the land of serious party lovers.

At a mooring, Fort Lauderdale. Just sent a story to Harper's about my experience with a bagpiper in Bermuda, the same one John Lennon heard when he was there. That piper played the Piobrochs. This piper wasn't nearly as good playing the standard songs, but it was strange to hear him in the middle of one of the richest places in the States. The next day, we passed a boat with a piper on board. Weirdness.

A couple of the smaller yachts

ho hum another mansion

One of the many draw bridges. The catamaran going through was called TATA

We found this most delightful anchorage on Peck Lake, part of a Natural Wildlife Refuge. We rowed ashore, walked a short, sandy path through the sea grapes and seaside morning glories to the most wonderful stretch of beach and the Atlantic Ocean. We could hear the waves crashing as we slept. The rangers had marked out turtle nests, either leatherbacks and loggerheads. The Greens will come later. We will definitely return.